Wes Wood wrote:At this point I don't have much to add, but on my first quick read the author's usage of ἐν At the beginning of verse 16 and in verse 24 stood out to me. It is not necessarily what I would expect to see.

Louw and Nida has 21 entries for ἐν.

In verse 16 what makes most sense in the context is m to (experiencer): #90.56 he revealed his son to me.

In verse 24 I would choose k with regard to (specification): #89.5 they praised God with respect to me or possibly q because (reason): 89.26 they praised God because of me (i.e. what happened to me).

89.5 markers of an area of activity which bears some relation to something else - ‘in, about, in the case of, with regard to
89.26 markers of cause or reason, with focus upon instrumentality, either of objects or events - ‘because of, on account of, by reason of.
90.56 a marker of an experiencer of an event - ‘in relation to, with respect to, to.’

Iver, I'd agree on verse 24 but why do you take verse 16 with that particular sense that you propose? Do you have any examples of "εν" functioning with that sense? My reason for taking it the way I did was because "εν" is easily read to denote an (indirect) agent, which I think fits the context much better because that is precisely what the writer is trying to prove, that he is an agent of God in announcing the glad tidings to the nations.

David,
It is not uncommon for εν to denote the semantic role of Experiencer. The entry I referred to in Louw and Nida has the following examples:
90.56 ἐν: a marker of an experiencer of an event—‘in relation to, with respect to, to.’14 ἐποίησαν ἐν αὐτῷ ὅσα ἠθέλησαν ‘they did to him as they pleased’ Mt 17:12; καλὸν ἔργον ἠργάσατο ἐν ἐμοί ‘she has done a fine thing to me’ Mk 14:6; πᾶς οὖν ὅστις ὁμολογήσει ἐν ἐμοὶ ἔμπροσθεν τῶν ἀνθρώπων ‘therefore everyone who confesses me before people’ Mt 10:32; οὐκ ἔγραψα δὲ ταῦτα ἵνα οὕτως γένηται ἐν ἐμοί ‘I have not written these things in order that this might happen to me’ 1 Cor 9:15; ἀποκαλύψαι τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ ἐν ἐμοί ‘to reveal his Son to me’ Ga 1:16.

Louw, J. P., & Nida, E. A. (1996). Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament: based on semantic domains. New York: United Bible Societies.

Almost all the meaning-based Bible translations I have checked agree, e.g. CEB, CEV, God's Word, Good News, The Message, NCV, NLT.

In the context, Paul is giving his testimony about his persecution of the church and 1:16 fits perfectly with his vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus as well as the task he was given at that time to preach to the Gentiles. So, if we read Galatains and Acts together, I can see no other reasonable option.

As always, thanks, Stephen. Please forgive my asking this here, but where would be the best place to start learning about things like emphasis, fronting, normal word order, etc? Most of the resources I have access to do not address these issues much if at all.

Wes Wood wrote:As always, thanks, Stephen. Please forgive my asking this here, but where would be the best place to start learning about things like emphasis, fronting, normal word order, etc? Most of the resources I have access to do not address these issues much if at all.

The best place to start is Stephen Levinsohn, Discourse Features, though it is becoming dated (and does not really account for that clitics have different behavior). More up-to-date is Steven Runge, Discourse Grammar.

For more advanced work, there are two monographs on word order by Helma Dik, an article by Dejan Matic, a dissertation by David Goldstein, and a very recent article by Rutger Allan. Prior to H. Dik, the best was Dover, and that was very idiosyncratic.

Notes:11a γάρ: the connection to the preceding discourse is obscure; it does not appear to strengthen v.10 but rather v. 9. I read δέ instead with other authorities, and see the connective particle as marking a new section. Runge calls this "I want you to know" element a meta-comment, and it has the discourse function of calling attention to the following item in the discourse.

11cProlepsis (or left dislocation) of the noun phrase. It activates (or topicalizes) the noun phrase to be the null subject of the verb in 11d, but syntactically it loosely belongs in the clause governed by γνωρίζω. (It has the function of separating the invocation of a new referent and its subsequent role.) The generative term would be "raising."

12a There is a narrow focus (= Runge's emphasis) on παρὰ άνθρώπον, as if "As for me, it was not from any person that I received it."

12b I read οὐδέ instead (and as a parenthetical). The object of ἐδιδάχθην is not expressed (= αὐτό = the gospel topicalized in 11c). This is a good example of a definite null complement.

12c The ἀλλα colon corrects the παρὰ άνθρώπον in the narrow focus of 12a. There is some question whether Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ is a subjective genitive (Jesus Christ did the revealing) or an objective / content genitive (the revelation was about Jesus Christ). I lean toward the latter based on v.16 ἀποκαλύψαι τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ ἐν ἐμοί.